Our Ohio: Profiles in Government is a public affairs series produced by the Ohio Cable Telecommunications Association (OCTA) with Ohio Government Telecommunications (OGT), the production facility of the Ohio Statehouse. The Our Ohio series profiles offices in state and local government and includes interviews with current officeholders conducted by OCTA Executive Vice President Ed Kozelek.

The programs first air on OCTA member cable systems statewide. Teachers may tape the programs, which carry no copyright restrictions, for use in the classroom as part of the cable industry’s Cable in the Classroom initiative. Curriculum support materials prepared by Upper Arlington High School government teacher Dan Ludlum, a C-SPAN scholar, are available on the OCTA’s web site.

Click Here for a list of programs in the series

The Our Ohio series was designed to provide cable viewers information on our state government and offer teachers a tool to help meet their curriculum needs. When three programs in the series have been completed, we package them together on one video. The informational “packages” for each of the three programs are grouped at the beginning of the tape for easy access by teachers. Each program in its entirety follows. We distribute the tapes at events such as the conventions of the Ohio School Boards Association and Ohio Educational Library Media Association (OELMA).

To increase distribution, we rely on relationships developed over years of Cable in the Classroom and critical viewing workshops and Internet training. We use the newsletters of the Ohio PTA, Instructional Technology Services of Central Ohio, OSBA and OELMA. We distribute tapes at member-sponsored CIC training and at Integrating Cable in the Classroom, a graduate-credit course offered through The Ohio State University. The Ohio Department of Education has helped greatly with distribution by including information on the series in broadcast emails to Ohio teachers.

The response to the program and its availability free to schools has been enthusiastic. We have heard numerous testimonials from media specialists and teachers who are using the programs to prepare for Ohio’s fourth grade proficiency test and in social studies classes. Following the Ohio Department of Education’s listserve announcement, we received literally hundreds of additional email and telephone requests, along with many expressions of thanks for providing this service free of charge to schools. Beginning this fall, the entire Our Ohio: Profiles in Government series will be broadcast to all schools by the Ohio Educational Telecommunications Network, the independent state agency created by the 103rd Ohio General Assembly.

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